A Ditherer's Diary (again)

GeorgianaCavendish

Brilliant news on the Quidco payout! You’re doing so well with that Tesco balance, it must be a great feeling to know it is nearly gone

Naomim

GeorgianaCavendish said:

Brilliant news on the Quidco payout! You’re doing so well with that Tesco balance, it must be a great feeling to know it is nearly gone

Thanks, I'm just waiting for the Quidco money to hit the account.  I'm also still doing my prolific.  £26 this month so far and I've been taking part in a two week study abut home working through Covid-19 that should earn another £30.  I always empty prolific every month and use it as an over payment to B'card but will chuck it at the Tesco card this month too.

GeorgianaCavendish

I’ve been lucky with Prolific recently too, I’m doing two different multi-part studies at the moment. 

I’m really close to cashing out on YouGov as well, I’ve had that account for 3 years! I think I need another 6 surveys to finally make it to the £50 threshold so fingers crossed. 

Naomim

End of the month so I've cashed out the £22.10 earnt from Prolific so far this month. 

I had a thought this morning, I wonder if you can tell from people's Amazon order history what their lockdown was like?  My orders so far have been:
Maths Revision for KS3 (year 10) as 14 year old is struggling not being in a class.
Orthopaedic chair cushion. My poor coccyx was struggling with the dining chairs at 8 hours a day.
2 x fans. One each for the kids bedrooms. They are small rooms and in the summer get very hot. 
Stay fresh potato bag. My potatoes keep sprouting
2 x charging cables as apparently both my kids phone chargers packed up on the same day
And a an audible free trial which has just reminded me to cancel !! - now cancelled

Non Amazon
2 x Nintendo Switch games.  One of them was Just Dance to encourage us to get up and move
2 x takeaways - Kebab & Curry.  - Need to keep this to a maximum of one a month.
so not too shabby really.  

Unfortunately I think a large chunk of money went on MrM's cigarettes   We usually have £120 each a month for personal spends. Because we didn't have anywhere to go and spend them, we didn't take them out of the joint account.  It seems there's a lot of cigarette purchases that have gone through.  From looking, the start of the month wasn't too bad but has increased from the middle of the month to now. I did mention it to him yesterday and he said he'd been smoking more, often during the night when he can't sleep.  I just have to keep encouraging him to get on his vape.  For April we have both taken out our monthly money so I have asked him to make all his cigarette purchases from there and if he runs out then that's it.  My monthly money has been transferred to my Monzo account. So far only been used to top up bits in the local Tesco, Bread & milk which should come out of the grocery fund.   Anything left in my personal spends at the end of this month - which should be most of it, will go on a credit card over-payment.

I'd like to say the lockdown will have cured me of my coffee shop habit but I am still spoilt by my Tassimo machine making a lovely latte.  I'm restricting myself to one a day and at the moment I can get 16 pods for £7 so working out at 0.44p a latte. A lot cheaper!  

Keep well, stay safe.

Naomim

Naomim

1st of the month, my piggy money has transferred and is now in my Monzo pots.  I find adding funds to my pots ridiculously exciting and love looking at them.

I have also just made an over-payment of £405.02 to the MrT's card.  
£182.91 = Quidco cashout
£22.11 = Prolific monthly cashout
£200 = MrM's monthly travel costs being appropriated.

This leaves the MrT's balance at £232 which should be able to be cleared next month. 

I'm still finding it amazing, 5 months in from my LBM that I am managing a budget, I can put money by and still find the funds to pay over my minimums on my credit card debts - in some cases just £1 or £2.  

I may play with my snowball later.

Naomim

moving_forward

Well done Naomin,
Our Amazon and other orders are very much on the high side at the moment but we ordered a couple of household big ticket items.  A combination Microwave which is working great on not putting on a whole oven for just a small thing...and Mr M_F has discovered the grill makes mean cheese on toast and a carpet cleaner which is going to be worth its weight in gold.  Still working but we have had a week of annual leave so house is looking great, carpets in particular!

Naomim

@moving_forward they sound like great buys. I was toying with the idea of a halogen oven but not sure we have the space and whether it would be big enough to feed a family.   When microwaves were new, my Mum saved up and bought a combination microwave. She loved it and cooked loads of stuff in it.   MrM and I are talking about taking a few days personal leave. My boss said he didn't want anyone booking holidays and MrM's have said they want everyone to take 10 days before August    I'm going to talk to my boss today.

On the MSE front, I have had a refund of £130 from 14yo's school trip that's not going ahead, this is going into my birthday presents pot rather than an over-payment. I am also getting a refund of £50 from my work. I pay £9.96 a month for MrM to be added to my private healthcare thing, I tried to get him a virtual GP appointment with them and he's not registered.  Turns out work have been deducting the money for the last 5 months but never sent the form to the company.

I am still paying for DD's school trip. She's due to go away in October so for now I'm paying £20 a month until I hear otherwise. I doubt it will go ahead but I'd rather be up to date with the payments.

I also remembered it's my niece's 13th birthday on Sunday.  She loves reading so I ordered her a lovely cushion with a pocket for a book from an Etsy seller and a book to go inside.   

Stay safe

Naomim

moving_forward

Thats not good of your woek Naomin. Its lucky he didnt get anything serious needing the medcare!
Don't get the halogen oven. We tried one when the oven broke at the old house. It was rubbish!

Naomim

moving_forward said:

Thats not good of your woek Naomin. Its lucky he didnt get anything serious needing the medcare!
Don't get the halogen oven. We tried one when the oven broke at the old house. It was rubbish!

It's a good job I managed to get a virtual appointment with our own GP.  At least I found out about it. These things happen but yes, it's a good job I wasn't trying to claim back a huge excess on something and then refused.

Good to know about the Halogen oven. I love the look of them.  Having said that, my MiL had an air fryer and hated it but loads of people love them.  I think I need to give the spending a bit of a miss although I do need some bits for house repairs, our downstairs toilet needs a small shelf and some wood repairs as we had to remove part of the pretend wall to get to the boiler when it stopped working last year.  I'm dreading needing a new boiler as it will mean half the downstairs toilet walls needing taking out. 

 I need some dog food and will get that today when I go to Tesco and do the food shopping but that's it.  And I have booked off tomorrow

Naomim

GeorgianaCavendish

I've been trying to think of it as 'pushing back' purchases instead of cancelling them completely. I've got the money now to buy xyz (in this case a splatter guard for the frying pan) which would be very useful but I don't need it straight away. I'm playing with the idea of having it on my 'to buy when I get around to it list' and having the means available to buy it, but purposefully not buying until I've built up my domestic spends pot a bit more.